


Scalded

by CommanderInChief



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, a bit heavy to be honest, reference to horror elements in the show, reference to murder, reference to period-typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29512719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderInChief/pseuds/CommanderInChief
Summary: Gwendolyn thinks a lot about fault, these days.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Comments: 22
Kudos: 32





	Scalded

It’s the waning end of the night, when Mildred finds her. 

The air is calm, as it goes. The mexican summer has been broken, if only by a crack. Cooler air rolls in off the sea when no one is awake to feel it. Gwendoyln thinks it’s funny, like the place waits, waits until it is unobserved before it will breathe. 

Up her arms and legs is sunburn, raw, having been hidden through the day by cardigan and trousers, sweltering in Mexico’s summer heat. Even under the shadow of a just-not-sunrise, the tender parts are dark and swollen. 

It’s her own fault. 

Gwendolyn thinks a lot about fault, these days. 

It isn’t regret, not as such. She can’t regret this, regret  _ her _ and the thousand tiny choices that brought them here, to their privately happy bubble with a hot sun and a villa close enough to the sea to hear the tide. 

After Edmund, after the shooting, after the lump in her breast. Of all the ways that this could have gone, this is the fairytale option.

It’s just that fairytales never tell you about the bit that comes  _ after _ . You slay the dragon and you marry the princess and you ride off into the sunrise. Except- always an  _ except. Except the girl you love has nightmares, except you're not sure you’re much better, except something will remind you of the colour of the corridor where a sick man died then you’re up until sunset thinking of every step you put wrong and the sun has burned your skin through.  _

She presses a finger to her strawberry-speckled legs. 

_ There’s blood on your hands she can’t kiss away _ .

“Gwendolyn?”

Outside of the window, the tide bates its breath. 

“Oh.” Gwen takes her in with a sharp sigh. Her fingers come away from burnt skin and she blushes, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t, “Hi.”

Mildred’s crinoline nightgown rustles as she kneels, bare legs on tile floors. Even in the dark, she looks pale. In this light, she could be a ghost. The shiny black eyes do nothing to detract from the illusion.

They blink, just once, “Hi yourself.” 

And her lips quiver a moment, like they want to smile but don’t know how. There’s a tenderness in every tiny movement, like they were premeditated, put together in just the way that will make her feel better. She loves her for it. That kindness. Unpolished fingernails peel the robe from Gwendolyn’s raw shoulders, letting them feel the benefit of the night air. “There,” She says in concern, then in humour, “why didn’t you at least rub some vaseline onto you after, hmm, if you wanted to sit around in the sun and get burnt _?”  _

It’s not one inch of the burning that she’d seen on that man’s body, skin and fascia melted together like sweat running up his legs and back and pulsing chest. She asks the question outright, from the blue, 

“If I weren’t at the hospital, that night, would that man still have died?” __

Mildred shakes her head, takes Gwen’s stiff, sweaty fingers into her cool palms. “That man”, she says, “was very sick when he came to us”. 

She feels the cold in that touch, right the way to the sweat slicking the hair on the back of her neck. There’s a sudden urge she must stuff down, to snatch her hands back and scream in frustration. A night like this would carry that sound, all the way out to the tide.

“Weren’t we sick, by the standards of that hospital? What we’re doing? The way we love? Would that make it okay to- to boil-” And she has to stop there, she must, because her stomach is lurching on empty- “Mildred, _why did those baths even go that hot_?” 

“For treatment.” 

“What  _ kind  _ of treatment?” 

“A treatment that we don’t use anymore,” 

“You did that on  _ purpose _ ?”

“We used to.” 

“What kind of an answer is that!”

“The kind of answer that’s supposed to reassure you that it was not your fault!” 

“Did you ever use it on people like us?”

She waits for the flinch, still, on _ us _ . 

“I told you, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” 

“Gwendyoln, you’re being unreasonable,” she spoke like she might to a misbehaving child, “Now come back to bed.”

“You’re not answering my question!”

You can hear the moment that Mildred snaps, 

“It was what that man deserved!” 

And Gwen jolts back, mouth open, thoughts stopped entirely. A familiar, curling, feeling of dread came up in her stomach, “What… what do you mean?”

And that’s when she sees the shift, Mildred… changed, with wide eyes that caught the light like jars in a sweetshop. Her voice was childishly sticky. There was no mistaking it as she spoke, in equal delight and excitement, “Oh, my darling, I didn’t tell you because, well, I couldn’t,” Her hands are in Gwendolyn’s hair and instinctively she knows she wants no part in it. “I was so afraid that you wouldn’t understand but I know better now, I do- and I can make this all okay.” 

This is a Mildred she recognised, dangerously well. 

There, on the floor, she wills herself to say something, to stop this, but no sound comes out.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, because, because you didn’t kill that man, he wasn’t even a patient,” It’s the way she says it, like it’s the greatest truth in the world, whispered as a gift from one woman to her lover. 

“ _That doesn’t make any sense,”_ she protests, “He- he was locked in the bath because he was a schizophrenic. You told me that”. 

_ “ _ Yes,” Mildred is patient, “I did.” 

“You lied,” by this point, it is an observation. You cannot love Mildred Ratched and feel betrayed when she lies. She knows better now, “To protect me _?”  _ Please, please, let it be to protect her, because she is far, far too tired to be angry now. She wonders if her lover can see it, the fatigue in her, as she runs a single knuckle, Oh so tender, down her cheek. 

“Don’t you see? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, all this time. He was a private investigator, a paid killer. Doctor Hanover, remember, he’d gotten on the wrong side of some very powerful people. And that… man, if you can call creatures like that people, he put himself in that hospital all on his own to try and get to him. See? You can’t have killed him.”

She wishes she could accept that at face value, she does, but her skin is crawling with one unanswered question too many, “Someone did.” 

“Yes,” She leans back on her heels, beaming with pride, 

“Me.” 

For a moment, even the sea is holding its breath. 

She can’t move. It’s the first thing she’ll remember thinking when her brain comes back. Mildred has killed someone and Gwendoyln cannot move. Cannot move from that spot, trapped in two walls and it’s cold, beige floor. The spot where they’d once danced barefoot with moving boxes against every surface, and in this spot Mildred’s smile had hidden- but was felt- on the skin of her neck and in this spot they pressed heart to heart in that lazy, loving waltz of a Sunday morning. This spot in the days before the treatment, before the mistletoe, when heartbeats were still such a precious thing, living in the soft, sad knowledge that time was running out. 

They have all the time in the world, and Gwendolyn thinks her touch feels like poison. 

“What?” She says, or maybe she just imagines herself saying it. Her head is twisted like the vile coil of a nightmare but she knows, instinctively, that her mind is wide awake. A breeze slips under the studio door, and she shudders. 

“No, you’re not making any sense. You’re delusional. You’re lying.”

“And why would I ever lie about something like this?” Her eyes are bright and earnest and not for the first time, Gwendolyn thinks she might be about to vomit. 

“Please be lying.” 

“I’m not lying.” The annoyance was creeping back into her tone and Gwendolyn tried to shuffle back to find her spine already lined up with the brick on the living room wall. Her glassy eyes tipped up. Watching. 

_ Waiting.  _

Mildred’s silhouette glides through the room, nightdress billowing delicately at her calves. If could not see them, she might say she looked as if her feet didn’t touch the floor at all. Instinctively, she knows that she’ll be creeping back to bed, that whatever she does now, she won’t be back until morning. They’ll pretend nothing has ever happened and Mildred will make pancakes then smile at her across the breakfast table as if it makes everything okay. There are times, Gwen thinks she knows her better than she knows herself. And then-

_ Mildred, what have you done? _

She closes her eyes, exhales. Her cheeks are wet. 

Through the curtain, the first of rising sunbeams sear on her skin, hot as water. 


End file.
